The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  ROOSEVELT LOST NO TIME in following Schurz’s advice. While awaiting the verdict of the House, he made his planned trip to the South with Elliott, who had agreed to manage Douglas Robinson’s estates in Virginia. The two brothers parted affectionately; Elliott declared he was completely cured, and anxious to atone for his misdeeds. Theodore went on to Kentucky, relieved that the long family crisis was over. “It is most inadvisable, on every account, that you and I should have any leading part in Elliott’s affairs hereafter,” he wrote Bamie, “especially as regards his relations with Anna … We have done everything possible … anything more would simply be interference, would not ultimately help her or him, and would hurt us.”97

  His business in Owensboro did not detain him long; neither did further business in Texas, for in early April he was at the ranch of a friend near the Mexican border. Here he spent two exhilarating days hunting wild hogs on horseback. Running down a band of five on the banks of the River Nueces, he managed to shoot a sow and a boar. “There was a certain excitement in seeing the fierce little creatures come to bay,” he mused afterward, “but the true way to kill these peccaries would be with the spear.”98

  THE HOUSE VOTED an investigation of the Baltimore affair by the Civil Service Reform Committee on 19 April 1892. John Wanamaker was asked how soon he could prepare a statement of his official position, and replied that “he would hold himself at the service of the Committee for any date on which Mr. Roosevelt was not to be present.”99

  A special hearing of the Postmaster General was promptly scheduled for Monday, 25 April. Speaking with an air of weary dignity, Wanamaker said that he had not laid eyes on Roosevelt’s report until returning from vacation the previous September. Soon afterward Postmaster Johnson had written to him complaining that the document was based on warped evidence. According to Johnson, Commissioner Roosevelt had arrived in Baltimore without warning, and had “frightened” and “bulldozed” Post Office employees into making rash statements that they later begged to withdraw. He had conducted a “star-chamber investigation” in which “men of very ordinary intellect” were denied counsel, and subjected them to a barrage of “leading questions.”100 Wanamaker felt that the men were entitled to be heard on their own behalf, and had ordered his two most senior inspectors to reinvestigate the case. Their report—which he did not happen to have on him at the moment—proved that Roosevelt’s victims had not been soliciting election expenses at all; on the contrary, they were merely raising funds for a pool table. It was the official view of his department, therefore, that “the facts do not justify the dismissal of … anyone for violation of the Civil Service Law as charged.”101

  Wanamaker, who regularly taught Sunday school in Philadelphia, was at his sanctimonious best in cross-examination. He said that Postmaster Johnson had been “reprimanded” for allowing his men “to give impressions to the Civil Service Commissioner which were not justified by facts.” Yet, on the whole, Johnson had done a remarkably good job in enforcing Civil Service rules. “The condition of the Baltimore Post Office is like the millenium in comparison with what it was in the previous Administration.” Then Wanamaker launched into a speech which must have made Roosevelt boggle when it appeared in the evening paper:

  I consider myself the highest type of Civil Service man. I have governed the Post Office Department strictly by Civil Service rules … It seems to me to be small and trifling business and unworthy of a great Government to discharge a man who declares that he gave five dollars to a pool table … And while I have not seen my way clear to order any discharge or indictment … I might, if I saw the least thing on the part of these men at the next election to prove that they had not been honest or fair, dismiss them and forty more, if necessary. I am a law-keeper.102

  Roosevelt’s turn came a week later, on 2 May. He made his usual delayed entrance, interrupting testimony by Treasury Secretary Charles Foster, pumping hands right and left, waving aside a proffered chair. While awaiting his turn on the stand he “paced the floor nervously like a caged leopard,” and when sworn treated the committee to a series of dazzling grins, some of which clicked audibly. He pulled a typewritten statement from his pocket and read it with gusto.103

  “In the first place,” said Roosevelt, “I stand by my Baltimore report not only in its entirety, but paragraph by paragraph. It is absolutely impossible that my conclusions should be upset, for they are based upon the confessions of the accused persons made at the very time the events took place. It seems to me less a question of judgment in deciding on their guilt than it is a question of interpreting the English language as it is ordinarily used.” He offered no apologies for his methods of investigation. “Of course I used leading questions! I have always used them in examinations of this kind and always shall use them … to get at the truth.”104

  Having established his own position, Roosevelt turned to an analysis of Wanamaker’s. Apparently “the Honorable Postmaster General” (he used this phrase, with heavy sarcasm, no fewer than eighteen times) put more faith in contradictory testimony, prepared after the fact with the help of lawyers, than in verbatim confessions recorded at the scene of the crime. “It is difficult for me to discuss seriously the proposition that a man when questioned as to something which has just happened will lie to his own hurt, and six months afterward tell the truth to his own benefit.”

  He was glad the Honorable Postmaster General admitted there had been violations of the law in Baltimore during the last Administration, but “if the wrongdoing is not checked it will be found at the end of four years to have been just as great under this Administration.” Roosevelt concluded, “I honestly fail to see how there can be a particle of question as to these men’s guilt, after reading the evidence that is before you; and if these men are not guilty, then it is absolutely impossible that men ever can be guilty under the Civil Service law.”105

  Before adjournment the committee voted a formal request for the Postmaster General’s report. “Ah! I presume I shall be allowed to see that testimony?” said Roosevelt eagerly. When the chairman nodded assent, he was as delighted as a child. “Thanks! Thanks!”106

  DELIGHT CHANGED TO DISGUST as he read the text of the nine-hundred-page document. Wanamaker’s inspectors had not been able to change the basic facts of the case—much of the testimony, indeed, was even more incriminating than before—but they blatantly ignored this evidence in presenting their conclusions. Commissioner Roosevelt, the report declared, had been “malicious,” “unfair,” and “partial in the extreme” in his investigation, determined “to deceive or mislead” witnesses for “some political purpose.”107

  Roosevelt reacted to these slurs with a dignity that merely emphasized the depths of his anger. He sent a registered letter to Wanamaker, saying that the Post Office inspectors had cast reflections not only on his actions, but on his motives. “There is no need in commenting on their gross impertinence and impropriety,” Roosevelt wrote,

  used as they are by the subordinates of one department in reference to one of the heads of another, who is, like yourself, responsible to the President only. But I have nothing to do with these subordinates. It is with you, the official head, responsible for their action, that I have to deal. By submitting this report without expressly disclaiming any responsibility for it, you seem to assume that responsibility and make it your own. I can hardly suppose this was your intention, but I shall be obliged to treat these statements which in any way reflect on my acts and motives as yours, unless you disavow them with the same publicity with which they were made to the Committee. I therefore respectfully ask you whether you will or will not make such disavowal, so that I may govern myself accordingly, and not be guilty of any injustice.108

  Roosevelt waited nine days, but Wanamaker made no reply. On 25 May, therefore, he appeared at a final session of the Investigating Committee “with a typewritten statement under his athletic arm and fire in his eye.”109

  HE BEGAN by reading his letter to Wanamaker, to the sound of excited
scribbling in the press gallery. Then, in a lucid analysis of the two masses of evidence gathered in Baltimore by himself and Wanamaker’s inspectors, he showed that at least two-thirds of the latter was even more damaging than his own. Yet Wanamaker had ignored this evidence in favor of the remaining third, which had obviously been gathered with intent to whitewash. “I have never sheltered myself behind my subordinates,” said Roosevelt loftily, “and I decline to let the Postmaster-General shelter himself behind his.” He would not accuse Wanamaker of an official cover-up, but “if the investigation in which this testimony was taken had been made with the deliberate intent of shielding the accused, covering up their wrongdoing, and attempting to perjure themselves, so that the [Post] Office could be cleared from the effect of their former truthful confessions, it would have been managed precisely as it actually was managed.”

  In conclusion Roosevelt noted that the Postmaster General was in the habit of saying he cherished nothing but goodwill toward the Civil Service Commission. “I regret to say that I must emphatically dissent from this statement. Many of his actions … during the past two years seem to be explicable only on the ground of dislike of the Commission, and of willingness to hamper its work.”110

  It was a masterly performance. Roosevelt kept tight rein over his temper, let the facts speak for themselves, and stepped from the stand with an air of complete self-assurance. The reaction of the editors of The New York Times next morning typified that of honest men across the nation:

  We do not remember an instance in the history of our Government in which an officer of the Government, appointed by the President and charged with independent duties of a most responsible and important character, has felt called upon to go before a Congressional Committee and submit to it statements so damaging to the character of another officer of the Government of still higher rank … Nor do we see how Mr. Roosevelt could have refused to do what he has done. He has been forced to it, and by conduct on the part of Mr. Wanamaker that is entirely inexcusable and without any decent motive. It may be said that Mr. Roosevelt has taken upon himself to accuse Mr. Wanamaker of what amounts to untruthfulness … That is not a pleasing position to be occupied by a gentleman who is a Cabinet officer and a person of conspicuous pretensions to piety. But Mr. Roosevelt showed that Mr. Wanamaker had adopted and acted on statements that he knew were false … that he bore himself generally with a curious mingling of smug impertinence and cowardice … The exposure he has suffered from Mr. Roosevelt is merciless and humiliating, but it is clearly deserved.

  The majority report of the investigating committee, dated 22 June, used even stronger language. It described Wanamaker’s testimony as “evasive” and “garbled,” and said he was clearly in “desperate straits.” The Postmaster General’s “extraordinary” failure to act in the Baltimore case indicated “either a determination not to enforce the law or negligence therein to the last degree.” As for the testimony taken by his inspectors, it “confirmed and corroborated fully” that taken in the original investigation.111 The righteousness of the law was upheld, and Theodore Roosevelt could enjoy the sweetest political triumph of his career as Commissioner.

  THE STORY OF the rest of the Harrison Administration can be briefly told. At 3:20 A.M. on the morning after the investigating committee filed the above-quoted report, Grover Cleveland was renominated by the Democrats for President of the United States.112 This news, coinciding as it did with the public disgrace of John Wanamaker, and reports of “scandalous” use of patronage in the renomination of Benjamin Harrison at Minneapolis,113 came as a signal for all disillusioned reformers to desert the Republican party, as they had in 1884. Although memories of office-looting under the Democrats still lingered, they were neither as recent nor as disturbing as those publicized by the Republican Civil Service Commissioner. “Poor Harrison!” remarked the New York Sun. “If he has erred, he has been punished. The irrepressible, belligerent and enthusiastic Roosevelt has made him suffer, and has more suffering in store for him.”114

  Actually Roosevelt ceased to pester the little general through the campaign of 1892, possibly because he knew Mrs. Harrison was dying of tuberculosis. In July he wrote a long, flattering article, “The Foreign Policy of President Harrison,” for publication in the 11 August issue of The Independent. Although the policy in question was largely that of Secretary of State James G. Blaine, Roosevelt’s conclusion, “No other Administration since the Civil War has made so excellent a record in its management of our foreign relations,” could not but have gratified his melancholy chief.115

  Roosevelt enjoyed a renewed burst of literary activity that summer, publishing at least four other major articles on subjects ranging from anglomania to political assessments. He also forced himself to read all of Chaucer, whose lustier lyrics had hitherto made him gag. Even now, he found such tales as the Summoner’s “altogether needlessly filthy,” but he confessed to enjoying the others.116 He exercised strenuously to work off the effects of a sedentary winter, galloping through the woods around Washington with Lodge, playing tennis at the British Legation, and whacking polo balls around the green fields of Long Island. “I tell you, a corpulent middle-aged literary man finds a stiff polo match rather good exercise!”117

  At the beginning of August, Roosevelt left to go West as usual, but official engagements in South Dakota permitted him only a week or two in the Badlands. He was not sorry to leave Elkhorn, for game was scarce and the empty cabin depressed him.118 Hell-Roaring Bill Jones agreed to drive him south to Deadwood, with Sylvane Ferris as a companion. This trip gave Roosevelt the opportunity to luxuriate in cowboy conversation, of which he had been starved in recent years.119

  On 25 August, the wagon rolled into Deadwood, and Roosevelt soon discovered that, in spite of his sunburn and rough garb, he was regarded as a visiting celebrity. This was due more, perhaps, to his fame as the captor of Redhead Finnegan than to any relationship with the current Administration. A deputation of citizens waited upon him at his hotel and announced that a mass meeting had been scheduled in his honor that evening. At the appointed hour a band escorted him willy-nilly to the Deadwood Opera House, where he was obliged to open President Harrison’s local reelection campaign. There was no point in protesting that as Civil Service Commissioner he was not supposed to take sides in a political contest. Local comprehension of his title was typified by the sheriff of the Black Hills, who remarked genially, “Well, anything civil goes with me.”120

  HE SPENT THE NEXT MONTH on a “tedious but important” tour of the neighboring Indian reservations. The dusty hopelessness of those sprawling communities seems to have wrought a profound change in his attitude to the American Indian. During his years as a rancher, Roosevelt had acquired plenty of anti-Indian prejudice, strangely at odds with his enlightened attitude to blacks. But his research into the great Indian military heroes for The Winning of the West had done much to moderate this. Now, touring Pine Ridge and Crow Creek on behalf of the Great White Father, he looked on the red man not as an adversary but as a ward of the state, whom it was his duty to protect. Pity, not unmixed with honte du vainqueur, flared into anger when he discovered that even here, in decaying federal agencies and flyblown schools, the spoils system was an accepted part of government. Clerks and teachers testified they were routinely assessed for amounts up to $200 per head by the South Dakota Republican Central Committee, on pain of losing their jobs.121 Any time now the collectors would be around to seek “contributions” for President Harrison. Roosevelt promptly called a press conference in Sioux City and blasted the “infamy of meanness that would rob women and Indians of their meager wages.”122 He demanded the prosecution of several high Republican officials, and announced that Indians in the classified service “need not contribute a penny” to any future assessments.123 The wretchedness he saw at Pine Ridge stayed with him long after he returned East. In a speech summing up his career as Civil Service Commissioner under President Harrison, Roosevelt sounded a note of human compassion rare in
his early public utterances:

  Here we have a group of beings who are not able to protect themselves; who are groping toward civilization out of the darkness of heredity and ingrained barbarism, and to whom, theoretically, we are supposed to be holding out a helping hand. They are utterly unable to protect themselves. They are credulous and easily duped by a bad agent, and they are susceptible of remarkable improvement when the agent is a good man, thoroughly efficient and thoroughly practical. To the Indians the workings of the spoils system at the agencies is a curse and an outrage … it must mean that the painful road leading upward from savagery is rendered infinitely more difficult and infinitely more stony for the poor feet trying to tread it.124

  On 25 October 1892, two days before Roosevelt’s thirty-fourth birthday, Mrs. Benjamin Harrison died, adding a final touch of doom to the moribund Republican campaign. The little general had not wanted to be renominated, and now, as grief crippled him, he wanted even less to be reelected. Privately he longed to go back to Indianapolis, but “a Harrison never runs away from a fight.”125 On 8 November, however, his wish for retirement was granted. Grover Cleveland returned to power with a 3 percent majority, thanks to the swing of the reform vote. “Well, as to the general result I am disappointed but not surprised,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge. “But how it galls to see the self-complacent triumph of our foes!”126

  What probably galled him even more (although he did not say it) was the thought that Lodge, who had scored a personal coup in the Massachusetts election, was now in line for a seat in the U.S. Senate, while he would soon have to pack up his bags and return to Sagamore Hill. A few newspapers wanted him to be reappointed,127 but it was unlikely the Democrats would favor a Civil Service Commissioner who had attacked President Cleveland so sharply in the past. He could scarcely have survived even if Harrison had won; since the Wanamaker affair, Republican spoilsmen had been insisting “in swarms” that Roosevelt must go.128